TIME IS FLYING... Another month has passed, can you believe it’s nearly November?! I’ve done a lot of tourist things the past month, so I guess you could say I’m exploring the UK a bit. I’ve visited the Jurassic Coast, Durdle Door, Bath and the New Forest and I must say some are more visit-worthy than others. I think Durdle Door is probably my favourite place in England, as it just looks astonishing. Photos won’t do it justice, so if you ever find yourself in the south of the UK take some time out of your day to visit. It’ll be worth it! The Jurassic Coast and Durdle Door were part of a field trip that we did, including a guide!! We got loads of (sometimes unnecessary) facts about the places we visited, but it was a fun day nonetheless. LITERAL MILE STONE On October 2nd I participated in the Bournemouth Half Marathon and I’m proud to say I completed the full 21,1km (or 13 miles as they’d say here) in 2 hours and 27 minutes. After the first two I remember saying NEVER AGAIN but considering the fact that I’ve completed yet another one, I think I’ll stick with… WHEN’S THE NEXT ONE? I also may or may not have started debating whether or not I’ll start training for a full one in the future… BUT I’m not making any promises just yet. Getting my race number before the race was another story by the way, as they send my original number back home (to the Netherlands)… So on the Saturday before the race, mind you the same Saturday as our field trip to the Jurassic Coast and Durdle Door, I needed to be at the Marathon Park at 8AM to retrieve a replacement number, and be back to board the bus at 9AM. It just so happened to be raining rather intensely on this particular Saturday morning, so I can easily say this wasn’t the most pleasant start of the day. When I got to the information stand at 8AM (the time it should open, if I was to believe the website) they were just arriving to put everything in its place. Needless to say it didn’t go as quick as I’d liked it too and at some point (this being about 8.45AM) I started to panic a bit. Luckily they finally got through to figuring out how to transfer race numbers and I can now say I made it in time for the bus (with a race number)! Like I said earlier, the field trip took us to the Jurassic Coast and Durdle Door, we had lunch in Swanage where we visited the ruins of Corfe Castle. The story the guide told us about this particular ruin was that it hadn’t been destroyed in battle, but rather had been destroyed just so nobody could use the castle ever again. We hiked along the Jurassic Coast and to Durdle Door an back, whilst I was constantly worrying about how much my legs would hurt during the half marathon the next day. Luckily everything turned out fine (even with sore legs)! VISITORS Halfway through October my lovely parents came to visit both me and the UK. I drove up to Southampton Airport to pick them up, my first car journey alone! All exciting stuff and I was very happy to see them (can you believe it’s been a full month since I saw them)! We made our way back to Bournemouth and after I went to a seminar, I showed them around the city. We also made dinner plans with Kristie and Patrick at Turtle Bay, a Caribbean themed restaurant here in town that we’ve grown very fond of. Friday was a lovely day and we had very exciting things planned for the weekend following. Saturday morning we hopped into the car and drove 2 hours up to Bath. Dad was cramped in the backseat, which is tiny in the car that we brought to the UK, so I’m very proud that he survived. Finding a parking spot in Bath was an adventure in itself, as our navigation made us drive through the middle of the centre… but we managed to find one! We then adventured into Bath and explored the city for a little while, after which we decided to do the single most tourist-y activity: the Hop-on Hop-off buses! Thanks to this we did see loads of Bath, so I suppose doing tourist activities does actually show you the essential things to see. We booked an Airbnb in Bristol for the night, my first Airbnb experience by the way, which was interesting to say the least. The house was filled with stuff and its owner was not even home. There was a couple from New Zealand staying over too, with whom we shared the house. The bathroom had only a bathtub, there was no shower to be found and the second toilet could be found in the garage… We checked out that second toilet, but it was almost impossible to find as there was too much stuff in the garage that blocked the way to it. Interesting, like I said. On our second day in Bath we re-did the Hop-on Hop-off tours, this time with a guide who actually told us about the things we drove by. He was a very kind man and he continuously made jokes that we sometimes didn’t understand, but we agreed that it made the tours a lot more interesting than just listening to an audio file. NEW FOREST? OR MORE LIKE DUNES? On Sunday morning, roughly 9AM (thanks Patrick) we (Kristie, Patrick and myself) adventured out of Bournemouth to a nearby town called Lyndhurst, situated in the New Forest. Now we were expecting a proper forest with trees and loads of autumn leaves and what not… Turns out the concept of a “forest” can be quite different, as it was merely a wide piece of nature that resembled more something like dunes. Although disappointed by the nature we found, it was still nice to be out of town for a little while and we had fun wading through muddy swamps and over grass covered hills. OXFORD We went on a day trip to Oxford on the last Saturday of October, which turned out to be more time spend on the bus trip than we actually had in Oxford itself. The bus trip was quite uneventful and when we finally arrived in Oxford we were glad to be able to stretch our legs! Our first event of the day was a walk along the many sights in Oxford, which turned out to be quite a challenge with the big group we had and some of us got bored early into the walk. After the walk everyone went off to do their own things and we went off to one of the many colleges to visit the dining hall that inspired the Great Hall in the Harry Potter series. Personally I thought the dining hall didn’t resemble it as much as I thought it had, but the fact that we walked on the actual stairs that were used in the first film kind of made up for it all… (For a little moment I truly felt like a Hogwarts student)! Oxford is a beautiful city and the time we had to explore was not nearly enough to do it justice. After visiting Christ Church College we went into the city to find the little market and I decided I wanted to go and find the UK’s largest bookshop, unfortunately it turned out that my navigation skills aren’t as good as I always think them to be… I got lost and went around in circles until I finally gave in and texted Kristie to find my way back to the group. After rejoining them we wandered around the city for a little more, deciding to go to the “most beautiful room of Europe”. This is more commonly known as the hospital wing at Hogwarts… Now another thing one should know about this room, is that it’s located in a library that was another part of the Harry Potter castle. Unfortunately the library tours were already fully booked and we were unable to visit this part of the building. All of us agreed that the most beautiful room in Europe wasn’t as beautiful as we imagined it to be, so that was quite the disappointment honestly. But all in all it was a really fun day with friends from all over the world (literally)! I think for some of us the highlight of the day might have been the long anticipated pizza at the end of the day. As far as university, things are going alright. It’s still hard to get used to the way they work here, as group dynamics are very different from what I’m used to at home. I guess I’ll just have to go with it and try to make the best out of it. That’s what I’m doing anyway! This has been my second bit of documentation, and I fear that they will grow continuously longer with each month. Thanks for sticking with me, and hopefully you’ve enjoyed this little ramble! See you at the end of November! Hope you enjoyed yet another ramble about my time abroad. xx Jildau
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ON OUR WAY It’s been a little over a week since I left for my big exchange adventure, and since then loads has happened. Time is flying by and I find it impossible to update everyone about everything. Apologies if you feel neglected, that has never been my intention!! It’s just that it seems like there aren’t enough hours in the day here. So to make sure everyone has the opportunity to know what’s going on in my life, I decided (I know this is very cliche and everyone does this when they leave for a while) to start writing blogs about my experiences here in the United Kingdom. Let’s take it back to the 13th of September, the day of my official departure to the UK. After a massive sing-song in traffic jams I arrived in Tilburg to pick up Kristie, who will be my travelling buddy for the next 5 months. We drove all the way to Dunkirk in France (yes more sing-songs occurred on the trip there), where we immediately encountered the massive culture clash between both countries. The security guards from France were very stubborn and not very talkative (even when we tried very hard to speak in french!!) whereas the British security guy was very polite and asked us where we were traveling to and what we were going to do in the UK. It felt like somewhat of a warm welcome, if that’s a way of saying it anyway. We had to open the boot of the car for another pair of french guards, don’t know what they expected? There’s no way we could’ve smuggled a third person into the UK… the car is way too small for that. It gave us a right laugh, I can tell you that much. Waiting followed until we could drive into the boat. This was a whole experience in itself, with a very steep ramp to drive over but we managed it alright. Our boat ride wasn’t very eventful, we were mostly disappointed with the lack of an outside deck. :( Stepping into the car on the other side of the canal was pretty similar until we were lead onto the roads. Suddenly we were driving on the LEFT side of it… which is still a little strange to be completely honest with you. Our first few miles on the motorway consisted of a constant mantra of ‘left, left, left’ just to keep ourselves focused. Now I might be making this way more dramatic than it actually was, but still… you don’t want to find yourself making the mistake of driving on the wrong side of the road. Needless to say, we arrived safely in Canterbury, where we would be spending our first UK night. We stayed in a hostel called Kipps, where a lot of international students were staying waiting to get access to their actual campus accommodation. It was the most social place we’ve stayed at, and it made us feel very welcome. I’d say all-in-all our stay in Canterbury was successful! We even made the spontaneous decision to drive down to Brighton, instead of on to Oxford, as the weather was so nice and we both wanted to go somewhere less sweaty. We hopped back into the car and made our way to Brighton, stopping to refill the tank for the first time along the way. Both not knowing what to do went into the shop first to double check what we actually needed to put into the car… but as mentioned before, everyone here is so nice! All in all, our drive to Brighton was great. We have been stunned by the many roundabouts on the motorways, seriously… who needs this many?! (Now we can’t lie, they’ve saved us a few times already when we accidentally took the wrong exit.) We arrived in Brighton in the late afternoon and got a taste of the British rush hour traffic, as driving into the centre was a nightmare. When we finally found the hostel (yeah, we had a good search for it because I missed the street the first time) Kristie jumped out whilst I waited in a spot where I wasn’t exactly allowed to park… She came back to grab some of our luggage and whilst she brought them inside, naturally, someone needed to park in our exact spot. So I started driving off when Kristie came running back (she had the address of the street where we could park for free) just in time to hop in. This again took us a while to find, with the necessary amount of sweating too because the address seemed to be amongst the steepest hill I’ve ever seen in my life. With the car parked safely and both glad to have arrived we headed back to the hostel and were shown our beds. It wasn’t as nice as the Kipps hostel, but the Kings Arms (that’s the name) was cheap and the beds were clean which, essentially, is the most important thing. On our way into Brighton centre, I kept pointing out places where I’d been with Lisanne the previous year, it’s really funny how you recognise things that you’ve only seen once or twice. Brighton is probably one of my favourite cities, especially the lanes are beautiful. It feels a little bit like walking around in Diagon Alley. On our last night in Brighton, we took part in a Ghost Tour, where someone took us around the lanes and told us ghost stories. The best part, in my opinion, were his really bad jokes. Overall it was a great experience that I won’t forget anytime soon. IT'S ACTUALLY HAPPENING, WE ARE TEMPORARILY MOVING HERE It’s now the 17th of September… THE BIG DAY as I like to call it. This is the day where we will be officially moving in, into our accommodation in Bournemouth. Upon arrival, we were very excited and our rooms are absolutely amazing. We’re 15 minutes away from the sea and city centre, and there’s a supermarket literally down the street. This last bit was very lucky when we realised that bedding and kitchen supplies were not included, meaning we had to rush out and buy all of those necessary items on the same day as we arrived here. We dragged Patrick (who is also joining us the coming 5 months) out to ASDA with us, and he helped us make the important decisions (like what bedding to choose). We both ended up with the most hectic, brightly coloured bedding I’ve ever seen in my life and I wouldn’t have chosen it if it wasn’t for Patrick’s arguments: “It’s happy, it’ll make the room nicer.” and “You could also turn it the other way around, then you’ll have only red.” (Little did he know the other side is indeed red, but the crazy pattern is still present there… thanks Patrick <3). Although I can’t argue the fact that the colours really do brighten up the room, so I suppose I’m happy with my choice. The first week at the University has passed now as well, and I think it’s safe to say the three of us are now familiar faces at all student support desks… but we managed to sort out everything in the end. Hopefully, everything is definitely sorted now, but I suppose we will only know when another challenge occurs. One of the many examples that we ran into in our first week: we got a nice paper timetable for the first week on which, we soon discovered, were a few things in the wrong order. We were due enrolment, before our pre-enrolment, which you aren’t able to do apparently and for some time by birth date was the 17th of October… Again, we joined queues and spoke to people after which we finally managed to enrol ourselves into the Media Production program! It’s all official now… To make things even more official, we were invited to an official International Commencement Ceremony on Friday evening, which included dinner! We got there after a good hill climb and were introduced to an Emmy award-like set-up, with various round tables all set up for dinner, facing a stage. Slowly the room filled up with Internationals and people started making conversation. The start of the ceremony was very impressive as Vice councillors, and other important looking people, marched into the room dressed up in their official wear and what not. Everyone was asked to stand up and it all felt rather formal. Then speeches were given by various different people and many words of welcome were given to all of the students from abroad. Dinner was served, which was rather nice (especially the not cooking yourself part). After dinner, additional speeches were held, after which the ceremony closed. All in all our first week here hasn’t been that eventful, however regardless of that time has been flying. Most nights I’m exhausted even though I wasn’t doing that much. I reckon it’s because we now have to walk everywhere, which takes up a lot of your time and it eats away from your energy. I suppose it’s healthy though, getting in your 10.000 steps a day (I hope so at least). This has been the first part of the documentation of my life here in England and there will be a few more after this. Hope you’ve enjoyed my little ramble! Thanks for reading all of it!! Sending you all a lot of love. xx Jildau |
AuthorJust silly me being, well, me! Hope you enjoy! ArchivesCategories |